Posts Tagged ‘people’

Here’s where I stop on the drawing for now. It will need a little cleaning up, and I haven’t decided what to do with that dark void on the upper left.

The water putty surface worked out well for this media. I wish I had made it a little smoother with how this drawing went along, but it came out okay. A box cutter knife turned out to be my best tool for scratching lines, and I discovered dragging it slowly gave me the best results. It was an interesting exercise. I also picked up some Prismacolor NuPastel earth tones, and Conte pastel pencils to help me get sharper marks.

More of the drawing has been laid down. I’ve filled in the chair, and have much of the figures drawn in. It’s a slow process with layers made by lightly drawing in an area, blending that, scratching some, and drawing in again, scratching, etc. This builds up texture that I can’t get any other way.

I’m back to working on the drawing. I got a little sidetracked when I wanted to test out a new idea for a fixative, and will show the results of that later. Here, I’ve gotten the dark background drawn in, and started on the chair.

I’ve discovered that conte probably wasn’t the best choice for this plaster panel, since the surface is so soft that the hard conte easily scratches into it. It will work, but I had to be careful with my drawing pressure, which slows me down. I decided to help things out by going back over some areas with soft pastels, and that was an improvement. I’m not sure about leaving that open dark area, and may add some furniture or some such later.

Making some progress with the new drawing on the Water Putty panel. I spent time testing out how the conte would work on this surface using some broken scrap pieces, as well as trying different tools and effects.

I wanted to be able to scratch away some lines, and saw that sharp metal worked best. I tried hard plastic and wood, but they did little more than push the pigment around. Water also didn’t work as I expected. I thought it would displace the pigment more, but it only sat there, as though the conte was repelling it, similar to what happens with graphite. A small, dry, stiff brush seemed to be the best tool for getting a smooth blend. As I’ve discovered in the past when scratching ink on a similar type of surface, the scratch lines tend to work in some directions better than others, which takes some getting used to. I feel I’m getting the hang of it, though.

Too much relaxing lately, so it’s time to get back to making some art. I’m starting a new drawing here, and will again be using conte crayons.

I was visiting with a carpenter friend over the holiday, and he showed me this stuff called Durham’s “water putty” that’s a sort of mix between plaster and wood putty. I mixed it up per instructions, and coated a small wood panel (11 x 14″) with it. I also wanted it a little rough for some extra texture, so I didn’t brush it on too smooth or sand it down.

After drying for a couple days, it turned a slight shade of pale yellow, so I decided to coat it with a casein wash of some red oxide paint I had made some time ago. Even though the paint was very thin, it was still too dark on the panel, so I wiped it down with a paper towel.

The drawing I wanted to use was an old sketch I had made of my friend Patricia with her daughter Elizabeth. I took a soft pastel that had a color value similar to the panel, but slightly darker, and rubbed it on the back of the sketch to transfer it to the panel.

I discovered that I can lightly scratch through on the panel to get fine lines to the lighter value under the paint, or also wipe off the paint with a wet brush, so that will let me draw in darker shades, and remove it for lighter highlights, or so is the plan. I’ll start the drawing soon, and show you the results later.

A few days back I was walking around Austin with my friend, Sylvia and her dog Freddy. We sat for awhile and I worked out this sketch. I first drew the lines in pencil, and later added the shading in charcoal. The paper size is 11 x 17 inches.